2024, David Leitch (Deadpool 2) -- download
"Wait, pause that for a second. Based on the Glen A Larson TV show?" says the Peanut Gallery, aka Marmy.
Wuuuut?!? Rewind and confirmed. Yes, this movie is based on that post-Million Dollar Man Lee Majors TV show where he was a stunt man who moonlighted as a bounty hunter. I can fully admit that I probably haven't thought about the show in decades, and was not expecting it to ride the nostalgic reboot wave. And yet, here we are.
You don't have to mention the Heather Thomas poster BTW. Shite, I think we just did.
So, yeah, despite not having any great nostalgic fondness for the original series, I can freely admit I loved it at the time so it kind of made me squee to know this movie was loosely, VERY loosely, based on the show.
Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling, Barbie) is Hollywood's greatest stuntman, and stunt double for Hollywood's greatest action hero Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Godzilla). But during a fateful fall stunt, from great heights, he breaks his back. A year and a half later Seavers is recovered, physically, but not mentally, working as a valet driver for a Mexican restaurant when he is caught in someone's social media post. He looks more than a little lost.
His old producer friend Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso) finds him and convinces him that his old girlfriend, camera operator Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer), whom he abandoned after he got hurt, needs him on the set of her directorial debut, the latest scifi actioner from Tom Ryder. Of course, she doesn't even know he is coming, and seeing him dredges up all sort of hurt feelings.
But Gail has brought him to Australia to do more than perform stunts for the movie, but also to find Ryder who has gone missing. I guess this is the analog to the bounty hunting? Anywayz, the hunt for Ryder sets off all sorts of excuses to do fight scenes and action stunts, to really play up the meta elements of a stunt man actually doing all the over the top jumps and crashes and punches and window smashes and .... and, well the kind of stunts actual actors (like Gosling) get other people to do. And in doing so, he uncovers the real conspiracy plot behind the point of him being brought to the movie set of Metal Storm.
Kent said, "As a crime/mystery story, the more it reveals itself, the dumber it gets." Yup. I was thinking, by the time they were blowing up boats in the harbour to the stylings of the Miami Vice Action Spectacular (a Universal Studios attraction show which Gosling's character was supposed to have built his early career at) they should have gone even more meta, and had the movie Tom Ryder was shooting be a crime-caper action movie instead of a terrible scifi flick. The actual mystery behind the movie doesn't really add to the movie, and its more about the fun of the set pieces, and chemistry between Gosling and Blunt. While I didn't really buy into their tortured romantic relationship, they just get along so wonderfully in the movie, its fun to watch. And the idea that two actors... in... their... 40s... are given top billing as beautiful, exciting people. Wow, like age appropriate!
That movie. Its supposed to be the latest blockbuster in Tom Ryder's long career, but the plot is so fucking ludicrous, its almost a mockery of scifi summer blockbusters. The closest I can come in comparison to it is the Wachowski's Jupiter Ascending with its wolf-boy male lead on his sky-skating roller blades.
In the end we have a fun fun movie that kicks off a summer with something appropriate, and yet still is not getting bums in seats. Kent and I talked a lot about where the industry is heading, and while I am part of the cause and not the solution (I did not see in theatre), I still feel a bit sad to see this world die slowly, especially considering all the supporting people who end up out of work, including stunt performers.
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